I don’t know what’s crazier: The truth that “The Day the Earth Blew Up” is the primary fully-animated “Looney Tunes” function ever launched in theaters, or that Warner Bros. — who first commissioned the venture for HBO Max (RIP) earlier than procuring it round to different patrons — was so decided to stop the movie from attaining its future.
Can a enjoyable, slap-happy, and superbly animated buddy comedy fronted by among the most well-known cartoon characters of all time and budgeted at 8.57% the price of “Inside Out 2” actually be that large of a danger? New distributor Ketchup Leisure is definitely hoping to show in any other case, they usually’re doing so with the good thing about a film that’s very a lot in regards to the pleasure and significance of preserving the classics lengthy after they’ve gone out of style.
A sensible man as soon as promised “that gum you want goes to come back again in model,” and “The Day the Earth Blew Up” finds Daffy Duck and Porky Pig doing their darndest to make {that a} self-fulfilling prophecy, because the film’s plot solely kicks into motion when its mismatched BFFs land themselves a pair of jobs at a creatively stagnant bubblegum manufacturing unit. You see, an irradiated inexperienced spacecraft of some form has ripped a gap into the roof of the home the place our heroes grew up, and the place goes to be condemned with excessive prejudice if they will’t elevate sufficient cash to repair it.
And but our heroes quickly discover themselves with an much more dire disaster on their fingers, because it seems that the UFO was host to a mind-controlling alien parasite that seeps into the bubblegum manufacturing unit’s greatest vat and zombifies everybody who chews their sizzling new taste. With the remainder of the world’s inhabitants on the unthinking mercy of Tremendous Strongberry, it’s as much as a pair of cattle from the Nineteen Thirties to save lots of the world from its personal simply hijacked style.
I’d be mendacity if I mentioned that “The Day the Earth Blew Up” was a lot — or in any respect — funnier for adults than different current children fare like “Dogman” and “Moana 2” (okay, it’s undoubtedly a minimum of a little funnier than “Moana 2”), however each hand-drawn body of this lovingly rendered throwback is bursting with the identical manic power that has allowed “Looney Tunes” to develop into such a long-lasting staple of American popular culture.
Which isn’t to recommend that writer-director Pete Browngardt is coasting on nostalgia right here, as that may’ve been a harmful gamble for a film geared toward little children, none of whom will choose up on its nods to iconic sci-fi touchstones like “Invasion of the Saucer Males,” “Plan 9 from Outer House,” and naturally “The Day the Earth Stood Nonetheless.” Quite the opposite, Browngardt merely shows a transparent reverence for Daffy Duck and Porky Pig’s timelessness as a comic book duo (spittling id meets stuttering superego, each carried out to perfection by Eric Bauza), and for the elastic pleasure that 2D animation lends to the anarchy they create collectively. He trusts that five-year-olds raised on Pixar and “Paw Patrol” will nonetheless be enamored by the sight of the large band, “Fashionable Occasions”-esque, artwork deco-inspired musical sequence that conveys the characters’ first shift on the manufacturing unit, simply as he trusts that they’ll nonetheless giggle on the sight of Daffy’s total physique exploding when he tries a wad of experimental new gum. If my five-year-old is any indication, they may even cackle.
It’s extra doubtless that children might be left chilly by the movie’s rare however pronounced makes an attempt to interact with a twenty first century viewers. A short sequence through which Daffy transforms right into a fat-assed TikTok influencer is by far probably the most painful instance in a film whose different appeals to fashionable tendencies are much less topical and extra benign (i.e. a Bryan Adams needledrop and a pivotal reference to boba tea), however even that’s a part of a self-contained “Looney Tunes” brief inside this function, full with a 4:3 side ratio and Porky Pig’s signature sign-off.
Moreover, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” does a greater job of pushing boundaries in different methods, notably as far as it makes use of the protection web its franchise offers — an American establishment, beloved by households for many years! — as permission to crank up the cartoon ultra-violence in methods that may delight and horrify kids in all places. A bit the place Daffy and Porky launch their very own ride-share service ends with them stuffing a buyer into the touchdown gear of an airplane, just for the poor man to fall to his demise instantly after take-off. That’s the pleasant bit. The horror doesn’t kick in till later, when the animation goes full “Ren & Stimpy” so as to present the alien gum wrapping itself round folks’s brains earlier than it congeals right into a Factor-like mass all its personal (“Properly that’s sufficient alien-infected gum for in the future,” Daffy quacks).
If the plot will get a bit of busy as soon as the large inexperienced alien behind the gum craze lastly touches down on our planet (The Invader is voiced by Peter MacNicol), the antics solely develop cleverer and extra satisfying because the story crescendos. A lot as I admire the film as a veiled rebuke in opposition to 3D animation, I admire much more that Browngardt doesn’t let that get in the way in which of a great time, and even makes means for tomorrow in the direction of the top. “The Day the Earth Blew Up” isn’t arguing for the previous on the expense of the longer term, it’s merely making an attempt to place a contemporary spin on a basic components in a means that makes you marvel why we ever left it behind.
Grade: B-
Ketchup Leisure will launch “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Film” in theaters on Friday, March 14.
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